We Have To Go
by Kman528
Summary: Life has gone smoothly since the Hunger Games was no more and the leadership that the Capitol had obliterated. Everything in Katniss' life was going perfectly, until it was announced that The Hunger Games was being reinstated. Will Katniss and Peeta's children be taken by the Capitol, or will they make a jurastic move to save their kid's lives.
1. Chapter 1

The wind swirls around me, like an apparition flooding through me. Touching my heart and my soul, releasing the memories in my mind of when I was a young women in here. How much I loved this place when I was younger, it's hard to believe that I could ever dislike it in a certain sense. Be afraid to enter, that it will bring back memories that I tried so very hard to keep latent inside me. It's hard to believe that I would ever be afraid of the forest. If when I was a girl, someone would have told me that I was scared of the forest in a future life. I would tell them that they are crazy, that they are talking insanity. But now I have learned, throughout my life that insanity is a form of the everlasting truth.

I shake myself out of my mind and clench my fingers around an arrow from my quiver and slide it out. I clip it onto the string of my bow, making little to no sound at all, and pull back the string. And I instantly let go with a shriek. The arrow misses the target of a small rabbit perched near a log and I fall over, spilling my sheath full of arrows everywhere.

"Mom," I hear a familiar voice shout. "Mom are you okay."

I watch as my daughter, Willow, kneels down beside me. She sets her bow beside her and looks at me with eager eyes. Pleading.

"Mom?"

"Oh, yes dear, I'm fine," I tell her, shaking myself out of my thoughts. She reaches over me and starts collecting my arrows that spewed all over the ground in her hands.

"What happened?" she asks, sliding all the arrows back into my quiver and handing them to me.

"Nothing really, it was just…the wind… It startled me," I tell her. Looking into her light blue eyes that remind me so much of her father. Her softly tanned skin reflecting the sunlight that streams through the canopy of trees above. Like mine, when I was a younger girl. But age, takes its toll on every person, and my skin just doesn't have the youthful glow that it kept years ago.

"Ok," she replies, but I can tell that she doesn't believe me. Nor would I if it was my mother telling me such a thing when I was her age. She is a smart girl, and that's why I wouldn't tell her why I actually fell over. But Peeta has a right to know. He probably still has the same things happen to him every so often. As do I time to time, a few moments ago being one of those moments.

Willow reaches for my hand, and helps me off the ground. Once I have composed myself, I give her a smile and brush the hair from her eyes.

"You are such a beautiful girl," I tell her, and she smiles back.

"Thank-" she says back, but is cut off by a caw in the distance. In a split second, her bow is empty, and the bird with the arrow falls from the tree a couple of ten yards away.

"I see your shot has gotten a lot better," I say, us both looking over in the direction the bird once stood living. "You are probably even better than me, when I was your age."

She smiles, and we both walk over to where Willow's kill lies on the ground. A large crow, its black feathers parted where the arrow enters its body. Its beak open, with a drop of blood falling out. I pick it up, take the arrow out, and ring the animal's neck. Just to make sure that it is dead.

"That's enough hunting for today," I say to her as she wipes the blood from her arrow. I put the bird into the game bag slung over my shoulder, and we start back towards District 12.


	2. Chapter 2

I walk through the opening in the fence around the boarders of District 12, holding the flap of the fence back so that my daughter can wriggle through the twined metal. In the distance the majestic glow of the sun slowly starts disappearing over the horizon. Leaving orange trickles of light and passion dancing over the valley and painting the sky in a beautiful collage of colours. A long day of hunting it was, successful as well. I managed to get a few good-sized doves from the trees, and Willow, the large crow and a groosling. Dinner will be very tasty tonight.

"You can go back to the house now if you want," I tell Willow. "I just have to make a stop at the butchers and then I'll be home."

"Ok," she replies, gives a smile and stalks off in the other direction. I watch as she goes, and she is almost a perfect replica of me, adding her father's beautiful eyes, but still.

I proceed over into the Seam, since the rebuild after the rebellion was ended, all the Districts were completely rebuilt. There were no older homes left, unless you requested yours to stay put, but once the Capitol set fire to District 12. Nobody really had the choice of that since the only things that were left were the thick concrete foundations. I slowly walk past where my old house used to stand. Nobody had built a house on it, not yet anyway. The foundation still in good shape, a few rocks here and there. But that is all that is left. Nothing to raise a family in, nothing to call home. I look away from the sight of my old house, and push down the memories that it brought me. Like when I gave my late sister Prim that goat for her birthday, and when she named it Lady. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. But standing here also brings back the bad memories though too. When my mother shut down after my father's death, she wouldn't come out of her mind to the real world. She was too focused on my father's death, too scared to have to care for two daughters alone. We starved, and almost died, but luckily for that boy with the bread, I am here now. Just thinking about him makes me want to be in his arms he even more, so I start walking faster towards the hob.

The hob was rebuilt after the rebellion as well, except made into a nicer and more efficient area to work and sell things in. Wood desks and stands were imported, nice pine shelving, and tiled floors. It was nothing like the old hob, that had a dingy odour to it and made you want to evade it at first glance.

I slowly push open the two doors at the front and peer inside. Most vendors have closed up for the night, and others are packing up now. Ready to head home and be with their families and loved ones. I stroll towards the back of the hob where Alta, the butcher lives. She had a special area of the hob cornered off so that she could live there. She is very much the owner of the hob, or at least she acts like she owns it. Whenever something is going on, she is there to deal with it. But nonetheless, she is a good butcher, and I'm glad to have her around to deal with my prey.

I walk up to her large red door and knock. I wait for a few seconds and the door flings open. Alta stands there in a large brown coat and khaki brown pants, but no shoes. Her burly face and long pointed nose stare down at me, and her Seam grey eyes peer into mine.

"Ah, Katniss, I was wondering when you were going to show up," Alta says, and I am taken aback a little, but disregard it, she probably didn't mean it in a bad way. It's just Alta being, Alta.

"Sorry about that," I tell her the nicest voice I can manage. "We just got a little held up tracking down a bird she shot down." I lie.

"She?"

"Oh yes, sorry, my daughter has been hunting with me lately," I reply.

I hand Alta the game bag and she opens in, taking the birds out one by one, examining each of them carefully. "My daughter shot the groosling and the crow."

Alta has an impressed look on her face and says, "Her shot has improved, good enough to kill the animal, but not to ruin any meat."

"Ya..." I say, but I'm not really listening, my mind is too placed on what happened to me in the forest. Alta invites me in and pours me a warm glass of apple cider. I thank her and watch her start cutting up my animals. Just the finesse she has with the knife that she grasps loosely in her hands, reminds me so much of Clove. The girl from District 2 that I knew many years ago that almost killed me. The way she dealt with knives you could swear that they were apart of her body. That vile girl, laughing in my face, talking about how she killed Rue... I stop thinking and try to say something quickly to get myself out of my thoughts. To get away from the nightmares.

"It's getting pretty cold out there," I say, hoping to break the silence.

"Yes it is, I'm expecting an early winter this year, it has cooled off a bit in the last week," Alta replies.

"I guess that is not such a bad thing, I mean most of the birds go away for the winter, but foxes are out more, and the rabbits too. And I won't have to worry about the bears eating any of my traps or getting into my snares."

"I hate winter," Alta spits out. I look at her a little confused and then continue listening. "It's bad for business, not a lot of people hunt throughout the winter, only you and a few others. Lately business has been bad Katniss. Not a lot of people have hunted, people are just starting to not do many things anymore."

I sigh and look at my feet, "Sometimes it would be nice if certain things returned back to the way they were. Take away the starving and the games, and life would have been perfect."

"What about the mining?"

"If they had the equipment that they have now for mining the coal, everything would have been different. My father might not have died, and my life might not have been the same as it is now."

"Some things shouldn't change," Alta says with a smile. She hands me my game bag, full of my freshly cut fillets and I hand her a few coins.

"Pleasure doing business with you," she shouts to me as I walk out the door and out into the cool air.

* * *

The flakes start falling slowly. The odd one drifting from the sky, falling on the ground, and then melting a few seconds later. Then they start falling in clumps, then constant gusts of them fall from the sky. A blizzard, Alta was right, an early winter. I stamp my feet and shake my coat out as I enter my home. I am greeted by Peeta as I enter the door, he takes the game bag in his hand and examines it.

"Good day for hunting?" he asks casually.

"Willow didn't tell you about it?" I ask him back just as casual.

"No, not really."

"Well, it was nice, but there is something I need to talk to you about later," I tell him, trying to make myself sound as serious as possible.

"What's wrong, is everything all right," he rests his hand on my shoulder and eases the jacket off my shoulders. I look up at him, into his concerned blue yes. Just the sight of them brings back memories of how they lured me in as a young women. Blue like the sky, and the flowers that grow in the meadow.

"Yes, everything is fine," I tell him within a sigh as I look away. I take off my boots and walk into the kitchen, Peeta trailing behind me with the game bag in his hand.

"You might as well tell me now Katniss, there is no point in waiting until later, the kids are upstairs, and there is nobody here to interrupt us," he says, convincing enough for me to spill. He was always a person who had a way with his words, he is so persuasive, and I guess that's the only reason I have told him as much as I have in my life.

"Katniss?"

"I saw Cato," I finally spit out. I pull the breasts of the groosling out of the bag and set them on the counter, taking a silver knife in my hands.

"That's impossible," Peeta says, sporting a confused look plastered on his face.

"Well obviously not in real life, he died years ago, I saw him in a flashback. I pulled back my arrow in my bow to shoot and the memory of me lodging my arrow into Cato's hand just before his death appeared in my head."

Peeta looks to the ground, his eyes intensifying as if he is trying to process something in his mind.

"Do you still have flashbacks from the games?" I ask him, slicing the groosling into small cubes.

"No, not flashbacks, but the dreams are still their, the nightmares sorry," he corrects himself.

"Ya, the nightmares still haunt me to," I tell him. There is a long break of silence that stretches throughout the room, throughout our home. Nothing makes a sound. "Do you think they will ever go away?"

"If after 20 years they haven't, I don't think they will, they are a part of us now, and frankly I have gotten used to them," Peeta replies, and then the conversation ends there. I finish chopping the groosling, and drop it to a large pot of boiling water. I add carrots, celery, tomatoes and chop garlic and sit down. Reflecting on the conversation I had moments ago.


End file.
